Photoshop seps to Corel

[Dottonedan]

Excuse me. I havent learned to say everything just how the tenderfoots prefer it to make the way you think more comfortable. Maybe I didn't say " let's be friends" as easily as you would like or exactly as you would like. I have a habit of sometimes clearing up questions openly. On a from or in types, it doesn't come across to "everyone" as it should have. With that said, piss on it, Happy New Year.

I felt what I said was sort of clearing the air of any questions openly to him.. To say, no questions here, no harm, no foul,  Opening up a little. like saying, Hey, let's be pals. He didn't comment on it like you two, so why ignight something that was never intended is what Im thinking.  Sort of like calling the kettle black.

[Chadwick]

Perhaps I read it wrong, just wondered why you took a jab at Z..
Hence my comment, no tender feet here.

As for the explanation you gave, that's all good.

Seems like one needs to write alot of info, when one tries to explain some of the older methods.

What I wrote above, is all I've ever bothered with, for my own work, or what I send out.
Although, I do label the plates and such manually.

[Dottonedan]

A lot gets miss construed in trying to convey your thoughts and processes in type. For example, I have no idea what your referring to as in a Jab at Z.

I was writing my long post apparently the same time he posted his and he got in before me. Happens often. From what I see, I don't think he's assuming I made a jab at him either. Might just be how people read things differently. All I did was give my experiences with separating for a wide variety of shops, you get customers that are using Illy version 4. Not CS4, but 4.  That far back is rare, of course, but it's true. Probably 10% of Corel and Illy customers are still using something old like Illy 9 is very common. Corel 12 is common.

So my point was to say that DCS2 is a safe option to save seps for. When I started doing that, my problems stopped.

I assumed you two thought the jab was at Scott (MySeps). And in that case, it was not my intention to "jab" anyone, but to try to develop an understanding. He's very good at seps and yes, some of my people are going to him. Some to try him out and some because maybe I can't get to their job.  That's cool and always has been. Even with art. Even Z is somewhat of a competitor as well. He does great art and even gets into seps as well. We share many of the same customers as Myseps and I would..

Z and I have been friends for years and I will even try to send him work now and then. So we have a business relationship as well as a forum friendship. His political thinking can be a little different than mine, but he's ok anyhow,

With Scott from myseps, I was trying to sort of develop a similar relationship. Maybe a crazy approach, I can't foresee how everyone takes my post so, it is what it is.

[Frog]

Jab this!

[Command-Z]

I believe Dan's references to "Scott" are to MySeps Scott. We're pals me and Dan...


... but business is business... I drink your milkshake! 

I Drink Your Milkshake! There Will Be Blood

[Chadwick]

And this is why one should read a post not once, not twice, but thrice,
before opening one's mouth.

My apologies.
 

Love that Jabberwocky poster.

[Sbrem]

There's some version of Freehand that will work under OSX on the Mac. The shop in Daytona I work at some uses it almost exclusively. The artist they use for their hot rod art still uses Freehand. I don't know if this is something that's been jerry-rigged post-Adobe, or if Adobe has made some unpublished accommodations, but it seems there's a Freehand fanbase out there using it on current operating systems (on the Mac side, anyway).
This is the site of the artist who does a lot of their work. He used to be on staff, and he recently did the Turkey Run art for the shop:
http://www.adamicenogle.com
Maybe anyone interested could contact him and get the skinny on it.

That would be Freehand MX, which my wife loved to death, literally, because when I had to get her a new machine, it wouldn't run in Leopard... By the way, you can set up Illustrator to look somewhat like Freehand, it's an option in the View menu I think...

Steve

[Sbrem]

I thought Dan did a nice job of showing different methods to do this. I've been using DCS files for a long, long time, importing them into Illustrator as early as Version 5.0, not CS5, but 5.0. Dan's outline was pretty straightforward I thought. And Scott's addtions (Command Z that is) were right on too. For the last couple of years, I simply import the PSD into Illy and go. What I thought was really odd, was that Scott (MySeps) was asking a question that was so fundamental, because his samples of his work show excellent qualities. All the other methods like saving individual files, and converting to bitmapped halftones in PS before exporting also work great, but were the processes of 10 years ago. It's much simpler now to create in PS, save the separation channels as spot color, keep the RGB channels (so they preview well in Illy) and drop them onto our register mark template, set line count and angle in the Illy separation dialog and print. I've tried every method written here, and they all work. Anyway, great discussion and free flow of ideas to help each other out, and the lurkers who are looking for help but may be too shy to ask... Happy New Year everybody!

Steve

[Dottonedan]

No Prob. chadwick. We just a little esplain'n to do. No harm, no foul.




Sbrem.


Scott from MySeps probably needed to ask the questions (as I did early on) due to working at larger shops previously that for the most part had never heard of Corel Draw. My first 10 years in the business until freelancing much more,  I had never used and probably never heard of Corel Draw other than hearing about Painter. The larger shops are typically prone to having customers that deal directly with art departments that have used Illustrator and Photoshop and run on Macs.  A large shop can run all PC and all Corel just as easily for recieving files from inside your own art department, but as we know, receiving files from all sorts of company's on the outside, you tend to go where the majority of your file are coming from.


10-15 years ago, I was stumbling around trying to figure out how to save my files for Corel and never owning one till the last few years, I was never 100% sure what I was doing was the most efficient. I had to go by what customers receiving my files told me of their experiences using the file. All in all, this seemed to be the most common method that worked.


Businesses like design houses in large company's and ad agencies. They all predominately use Adobe products. I'm not arguing the reasons why. They just do. With that said, while Corel is a good program especially for screen printers, it's still not widely recognized by the design world. It's growing in popularity and is indeed a great program. Maybe one day, it will also be embeded into half of the those types of businesses. Most all again, use Adobe products and most are on Macs. I say "most". I'm sure we have exceptions.  This has been that way for decades but Corel is expanding it's territory fast.

[Command-Z]

No Prob. chadwick. We just a little esplain'n to do. No harm, no foul.




Sbrem.


Scott from MySeps probably needed to ask the questions (as I did early on) due to working at larger shops previously that for the most part had never heard of Corel Draw. My first 10 years in the business until freelancing much more,  I had never used and probably never heard of Corel Draw other than hearing about Painter. The larger shops are typically prone to having customers that deal directly with art departments that have used Illustrator and Photoshop and run on Macs.  A large shop can run all PC and all Corel just as easily for recieving files from inside your own art department, but as we know, receiving files from all sorts of company's on the outside, you tend to go where the majority of your file are coming from.


10-15 years ago, I was stumbling around trying to figure out how to save my files for Corel and never owning one till the last few years, I was never 100% sure what I was doing was the most efficient. I had to go by what customers receiving my files told me of their experiences using the file. All in all, this seemed to be the most common method that worked.


Businesses like design houses in large company's and ad agencies. They all predominately use Adobe products. I'm not arguing the reasons why. They just do. With that said, while Corel is a good program especially for screen printers, it's still not widely recognized by the design world. It's growing in popularity and is indeed a great program. Maybe one day, it will also be embeded into half of the those types of businesses. Most all again, use Adobe products and most are on Macs. I say "most". I'm sure we have exceptions.  This has been that way for decades but Corel is expanding it's territory fast.

Plus, a lot of us freelancers just provide the sepped art via the WWW and don't usually deal with output, since most shops handle that on their end using their own set-up templates and specs.

[Sbrem]

Well said Dan. I was working for me, so I had to figure stuff out, and like you, did quite a bit of stumbling, especially on trying to use stochastic instead of halftones. That was when I ran into a program called Plate Maker, which essentially organized PS's DCS function into a simple dialog box. Now, I've never really used CD (I had version 6 for Mac, didn't like it) so I suppose maybe I shouldn't have commented on it, I just assumed it had similar import and export functions to other programs like Illy and Freehand. But he has the info now. (Again Scott, my apologies if I came across as an AH) I love this forum.

Steve

[myseps]

Thats right, i've never seen or used Corel before.  I thought Photoshop was the "standard" and that is all that was used for raster separations.  Also in my earlier years I was told just to "make it look as good as it can using up to 13 colors".  There really was no pressure to conserve colors.  That is until I started getting more hands on in the shop, and I saw what a headache that many colors can be.  Sure we had the capabilities to print that many colors, but its just more screens and registration to deal with.  Now I only use as many colors as needed, without going into excess.

[Chadwick]

One nice thing about putting your channels into a Corel file, is the format's file compression.

I know Illy is using compression now, or it's now a default or something, since I can't always open newer files,
but that's another story, and I don't use it on a regular basis.

I don't have any hard numbers here, but it's always been a smaller file for me to send out,
as opposed to sending a PSD, which helps when using email for sending files.
( some of my PSD's get right out of hand,file size-wise )